She doesn't want the hype

Brittany Ryan has outdone all previous female
college football kickers.
File photo by Lou Rabito, d3photography.com

She doesn’t want the hype.

She doesn’t want to be the center of attention because
humility seems to be one of her best qualities.

She just wants to be like the rest of her teammates, with one
goal -- to win football games.

She doesn’t want to be seen as a female football player --
just as a football player.

“She” is Brittany Ryan, the kicker for the Lebanon
Valley Dutchmen in the Middle Athletic Conference.

The senior was back in the news a week ago after breaking West
Alabama kicker Tonya Butler’s record for points by a female
kicker with 88 points.

Last week, Ryan earned her first MAC special teams player of the
week award after breaking Butler’s record in a 21-6 win
against Moravian. But, even being prodded, she really didn’t
want to talk about the record. She wanted to talk about how her
team beat Moravian.

“It’s been in the back of my mind but mostly
I’ve been thinking about coming away with a win,” Ryan
said. “The team worked hard all week, and I think we really
deserved this,” she said on godutchmen.com, the official
athletics site for LVC.

Ryan has had her share of the spotlight in the past few years,
including being in Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd
twice, once in high
school. She also was interviewed by legendary New York Times
sportswriter George Vecsey for a story last August.

But to get the real story, you need to start at the
beginning.

Ryan, from Easton, Pa., was like many girls, playing sports from
a young age.

“I started playing soccer from when I was about 4 or 5
years old,” Ryan said in a telephone interview last week.

As a senior, Ryan decided to try out for the football team when
she found out they needed a reliable kicker. And coach Steve
Shiffert got a ton of production out of her, as she was named
honorable mention on the Pennsylvania all-state team, scoring 52
points.

She was also named homecoming queen.

“The first time both the king and queen played
football,” Lebanon Valley coach Jim Monos said, laughing.

At that point, Ryan, who was the president of the National Honor
Society, thought football was over. She applied to colleges near
and far from Easton, such as Penn State and Clemson.

“LVC wasn’t really on the radar,” Ryan
said.

One day, however, inside linebackers coach Vince Pantalone came
to Easton on a recruiting trip and Shiffert set up Ryan to meet
with him about Lebanon Valley, about 90 minutes west in
Annville.

Monos said she came to campus and liked what she saw and decided
to come to play football as well.

“I wasn’t sure what to think at first,” Monos
said.

But Monos’ uneasiness was allayed right away when he saw
her dedication to the sport.

“She does everything we ask her to do, she does all the
conditioning, lifts weights with us, the whole thing,” Monos
said.

Conditioning brought its own worries. Lebanon Valley does some
of their offseason workouts in the pool and Monos was concerned at
first having 40 guys in the pool doing their workouts. But it was
short-lived.

“She was extremely appropriate and the guys never said a
word,” Monos said.

Other issues have popped up at various times, but all have been
quickly fixed.

“We needed to make sure she had a locker room to dress in,
and we have to call ahead when we’re on the road to have
facilities available,” Monos said. “She never asked for
it, it’s just part of the deal.”

Right away as a freshman, Ryan ran into some adversity on the
field. She wasn’t playing and frustration was starting to set
in.

“She wasn’t playing because her kicking was low and
inconsistent. Eventually she came to me and asked, ‘What do I
have to do (to get on the field)?’” Monos said.

In the next game against Albright, the kicker missed an extra
point, so Monos told Ryan she was in. She’s been kicking ever
since for the Dutchmen.

“I saw the opportunity to get in and kick, and my goal is
just to make as many as possible,” Ryan said. “I just
need to continue to perform.”

As a rare female in a male sport, Ryan has had to deal with some
unsportsmanlike behavior on the field, and even some embarrassment,
as a referee called her ‘son’ when she was a freshman
getting ready to kick.

But Monos said Ryan has a good sense about it most of the
time.

“One game a couple of years ago, if you watch the film, a
guy for the other team said something to Brittany and she whips
around and says something back,” Monos said. “She
doesn’t back down from anything.”

One place where that gets her in trouble is if there’s a
kick blocked or a botched snap.

Monos said he’s had to tell her more than once to back up
and get out of the way, but Ryan tries to get in to help her team
in any way she can.

“We had a kick blocked last year, and she went for the
ball,” Monos said. “I told her that wasn’t
necessary.”

“I haven’t been hit in a few years,” Ryan
admitted.

She’s also a model student as well, reinforcing the
NCAA’s motto that hundreds of thousands of student-athletes
will be doing something other than sports after they graduate.

Ryan, who has been the Lebanon Valley College honor roll
throughout her college career, is majoring in Business
Administration and hoping to get an internship with the Hershey
Candy company. She was also named to the MAC Honor Roll last
year.

Most have supported Ryan in her football endeavor, most
importantly her teammates and her friends.

“My teammates are like my brothers,” Ryan said.
“I felt pressure at first, but they’ve all been behind
me.”

Monos said Ryan is one of the more popular students at the small
eastern Pennsylvania campus.

“She’s in a lot of different groups, she’s
very well liked here at LVC,” Monos said.

Going into this weekend’s matchup on the road at
nationally ranked Delaware Valley, Ryan is two PATs short of the
all-time LVC record, which stands at 77. So, suffice it to say,
Ryan will probably be in the news again. Not that she wants to
be.

Unless it’s talking about her team pulling the major
upset.

Below: Ryan talks after the Moravian game -- starting at the
2:56 mark.

Jason Bowen has 10 years of Division III coaching experience at Wesley, where he was also the Sports Information Director. He currently provides color analysis on broadcasts of Wesley games on WDEL Radio 1150AM and has served as a staff and freelance writer for the Delaware State News in Dover. He has been a contributor for D3football.com since 2006. By day he teaches high school biology. He is a 1992 graduate of and three-year letter winner at linebacker for Mansfield (Pa.) University.